[Coco] CPU speed in MIPS

[wdg3rd at comcast.net]

I suspect that Diego used the real things (as there is no reason to specify t1100 when discussing emulation).  Mox nix, as I did similar tests and demonstrations back in the 80s (mostly to no effect, the Coco didn't run DOS games or the sorry business software showing up for the PeeCee) with similar results.  (I didn't leave Tandy because they abandoned the Coco, since they didn't for a couple of years -- I left because they went from the Tandy 6000 to crappy Intel/SCO machines, plus they dropped the Z-80 line and the best single user OS in history, LS-DOS [I consider OS-9 et seq to be multi-user, since as far as I know I was the first RS employee to set up a two station system with OS-9 level one in my classroom in RSCC 7237 at 740 S. Olive St, Los Angeles {well, I _know_ I was the first to set one up there, I may have been the first in the retail side of the company, I was just reading the manual and there were these bits that implied the possibility, so I did it and the sy
 stem p
riced out based on that that week's sale prices at $1000.87 including local sales tax for a two-station system system assuming you already owned two TV sets (generally a safe bet) }]).

Parts list:

64k Coco 1
Floppy drive
16k Coco 1
Vidtex Cartridge
Null modem cable cobbled together from two with 4-pin DIN ends
OS-9 Level One
Some time to kill
An RSCC manager with a sense of humor (rare)

The bit-banger serial interface did tend to drop characters when the "mainframe" was accessing the floppy, but the system worked as well as could be expected.  I was not then and am not now a serious programmer aside from the Bourne shell and descendants.  I just want a shell.  It was because I was seriously into Xenix (and may have been the third top RS Xenix support guy outside of Fort Worth only because I'm modest -- you'd be amazed about some of the calls I got but I was on the west coast, and people in the east had the list of stores to look at on the flyer and Los Angeles is as far west as any of them could think of, but I got calls from Fort Worth during business hours) that I noticed the OS-9 multi-user possibilities, plus my own Coco had been stolen from my apt the very day that OS-9 arrived at the store and that pissed me off.
-- 
Ward Griffiths    wdg3rd at comcast.net

The reason folks don't think of installing Windows as a painful experience is roughly the same reason men don't think of childbirth as a painful experience.      Mike, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/30/letters_3003/

 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: David Roper <dave at ebonhost.com>
> Were these tests performed in emulation, or on the real things?

> 
> 
> Diego Barizo wrote:
> > I've got a few numbers from the wikipedia, but most are of "modern" CPUs
> > I know about the issues that comparing MIPS present, but I don't think 
> > that there are many ways to compare computers from the 80s.
> > Anyway, I did some BASIC tests, and came up with some unexpected results
> >
> >
> >     FOR to 10000     A+1 to 5000     ? “A”*1000     Goto next 5000     
> > Gosub     IF/THEN Average
> > Tandy 1100     7     10     21     5     7     10     10
> > CoCo2 Poke     11     18     7     8     11     30     14.17
> > CoCo3 Poke     11     16     15     9     13     24     14.67
> > Vic-20     13     42     20     9     14     32     21.67
> > Apple //c     13     31     21     10     13     32     20
> > CoCo2     15     24     10     11     15     40     19.17
> > CoCo3     22     31     31     19     26     47     29.33
> > Atari 800XL     24     26     20     20     25     22     22.83
> > Model III     27     38     24     21     29     36     29.17
> > Model 100     32     39     50     20     24     36     33.5
> >
> >
> > Surprisingly, the high speed poke turns a sluggish CoCo into a PC 
> > killer (The T.1100 laptop)
> > The poor rating on the Print test for the CoCo 3 is because I used one 
> > of the hi-res text modes.
> > But anyway, the CoCo3 seems slower than a 2. Might be because the 3 is 
> > always in "all RAM"?
> >
> > Diego